Given that racists and slavers used the “natural physical strength” of black people to justify putting them on hard labor and some medics still think that blacks has higher resistance to pain, I wonder if when black athletes started to join mixed race sport teams, some racist would have used the same “biological advantage” argument that now transphobes use against trans athletes to claim it was “unfair” for black to compete against whites to justify segregation.
It was sort of the opposite at the very start of integrated sports. In the US and UK, at least, it was widely believed that Black men could not play sports simply because they did not, in fact, play (professional) sports. (And of course women were barely allowed to play sport at all in that era.)
Claims that Black people are naturally better at sports came later on, along with reasons why they couldn’t swim, or play tennis or golf, or ride horses, or do any of those sports that coincidentally have more access for kids with wealthy and/or suburban parents.
System justification is an easy game to play. A story for every occasion.